


We Have Always Lived in the Castle

by narcolepticbadger



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bluebeard-ish I should say, F/M, Halloween, Horror, Spooky OQ, SpookyOQ, bluebeard au, with a host of other gothic and horror influences thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-05 23:46:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16377335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcolepticbadger/pseuds/narcolepticbadger
Summary: The lady in the castle was known to be as dark and beautiful as nightshade.And thrice as deadly, for each man she had welcomed into her bed had met their end soon after, even if not by her hand direct. Now a fourth would be selected to rule beside her for however long he may, and why — why should Robin not try his own luck at kingship?[OQ, Bluebeard AU. Written for SpookyOQ.]





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Spooky OQ 2018. Bluebeard AU with other gothic/horror influences -- you've been warned. 
> 
> Title from Shirley Jackson.

Deep into his third pint of ale, and in the mire of his self-pity deeper still, it was in the tavern that Robin heard the summons: the lady of the castle would choose her next consort at a grand masquerade, a fortnight hence.  

The news pricked his ears, sharpening into a mad thought to go there himself and play the bachelor — not for any desire to wed, no, but opportunity of another kind might present itself if the rumours were true, and if he could slow himself to patience. It would not do to rush into things this time, if the latest disaster and dashing of his fortunes had proved anything, and so he listened to the babble of the townsfolk as he walked his last remaining copper (soon to be ill-spent on drink, like most of the others) over the back of his knuckles, reversed it, let it walk down again.

 _Unfortunate girl_ , they said, _to have won and lost three husbands in the same span of years_.

 _Cursed_ , others muttered, forking their hands into horns against the evil eye, _and something unnatural in the very air of that place._

A superstitious lot, no better than children when confronted with old wives’ tales, Robin would claim, and yet he could not deny that the look of the castle — broken spires and bricks that ran red with rust — set a curious shiver creeping up his own spine.

The lady, too, inspired a certain amount of dread, coupled with the deliberate solitude she kept by remaining aloft in her towers; though few had seen her with their own eyes, she was known to be as dark and beautiful as nightshade.

And thrice as deadly, for each man she had welcomed into her bed had met their end soon after, even if not by her hand direct.

The first had died in the stables — some weakness of the heart, perhaps.

The second had fallen to old age, though there had been whispers of treachery and asp-venom lying in wait in his bedchamber.

The third had ventured forth into the woods, hunting a rare stag for his queen, and met a terrible accident — or so it was assumed, for he had never yet returned.

And now a fourth would be selected to rule beside her for however long he may, and why — why should Robin not try his own luck at kingship?  

He had exhausted his resources, barely escaped the hangman’s noose for his latest foray into thieving, and now, penniless but for the one in his hand, his options seemed threadbare indeed.

What would it cost him to attend the masquerade and turn his mind to charming the lady when he stood to gain, at the very least, a few pilfered treasures from her halls?

(It might cost his life, he conceded grimly, but that was hardly worth much these days.)

Yes, it was settled — he would away tonight, to start the winding journey to the castle in the north.

He drained his tankard, waiting for the barkeep to collect coins from the patrons beside him before signaling with his own. He dropped his copper into the pile, just long enough for it to _clink_ before skimming it back into his own palm, and two more besides, and hastened for the door before the man might notice he had been swindled.

The night air was chill, the new moon shrouding all in shadows, and all the better for it, for Robin slipped free the reins of the best horse tied outside of the tavern, quieting the beast with soft words as they stole away together, unseen.

He had a fortnight to prepare his guise — garments fit for a lord, and a mask for the ball besides — and still not near enough coin to afford it, which meant he would need all of his shrewdness and daring to be ready in time.

And ready he would be, to come away with his hands and pockets (and his heart, what of it?) finally sated, if the fates would allow.

.

.

“Robin Locksley, Earl of Huntingdon,” he said to the guard who prompted him for his title, hearing himself announced to the hall as word was passed on and grateful that the man seemed to pay no mind to the fact he had stumbled a bit over his own provenance.  

He looked the part, to be sure, in his fine livery of emerald and black, but he felt as clumsy as a boy wearing his father’s boots or wielding a too-large bow for the first time: unbalanced, merely playing at belonging to this sphere of nobility everyone else seemed so at ease within. It had not been so difficult to lay claim to the title of Huntingdon and his new suit of clothes (both seized from the same man at the point of his knife), but _living_ in them was proving another matter entirely.

Catching a glimpse of some of the other lords who had decided to attend, he remembered to don his mask as he followed the procession deeper into the castle. He had been lucky to find the fox when he had, freshly killed in a hunter’s snare and not yet putrid, so that he had been able to skin the face cleanly off and preserve it, fashioning it into a piece far beyond the cheap papier-mâché and ribbons adorning the rest of the bachelors.

As his feet memorized the layout of the halls, the nearest passages to the exit, he let his eyes touch elsewhere, seeking for hints of gold. This wing of the castle was tastefully — yet sparsely — adorned, with most of the finery mounted and bolted high on the walls, and he began to doubt that he would be able to pocket any riches at all if he were restricted to these narrow avenues.

Ah, well, he had known this would be a fool’s errand and come but willingly, and now he must salvage what he could of the night by at least laying his eyes on the mysterious lady who dwelt here, and take her measure.

And lay eyes on her Robin did, for it was impossible not to be drawn to her as soon as he crossed the last marbled threshold into the ballroom.

She was, simply, luminescent — though she wore the black of mourning, she glowed golden in the candlelight, and anywhere she fixed her gaze seemed to burn with that same strange heat.

Her face was transformed by the lighting, and by the dark mask that cleaved to the dramatic line of her cheekbones. Black embroidered with gold, and Robin had no doubt that if his fingers traced the edge, he would find it skin-soft, velvet of the most sumptuous quality. Though the mask concealed all but two bands of her flesh, it did nothing to disguise her beauty, piercing as it was: deep-set eyes that caught and tracked the slightest ripple of movement in the hall, and a lovely bow of lips painted scarlet, both accented by the delicately cruel beak that sat over her nose: half-songbird, half-bird-of-prey.

 _Beautiful, and dark, and thrice as deadly as a clutch of nightshade,_ and Robin (forking the sign against evil behind his back, despite himself) found himself hungering to drink from her depths with more than his eyes.

He was not alone in that wish, if the prevailing mood of the room were any indication — all the men seemed to be held equally in her thrall, falling into coordinated formations that moved around the queen like lesser stars circling a fixed point. It was like a dance, one Robin had never quite learned the steps for, and he was swept into the elaborate choreography of the room with the others, watching as each suitor in turn joined with the queen to exchange a few pleasantries and was then dismissed, found wanting by the lady in some aspect of mien or breeding.

As the procession of bachelors shuffled ever-nearer to the center, Robin felt a thrill of dismay pass through him: his lips were dry; he thirsted, and did not understand his own actions, did not understand why he had not yet slipped away to look for riches elsewhere — and surely the queen would see him for the pauper he was and send him back to the gallows, for her eyes were as shrewd as the rest of her.

He could not deceive himself that the queen would spare him more than a glance, and all his plotting had been for nought, for _less_ than nought, and he felt the loss of still more hanging about him like a fog.

Too late for thought, though — the moment of meeting was upon him, and as yet another lord was sent disappointed on his way, the queen’s gaze settled on Robin with a thrum sounding in his head like thunder. Wordless, she beckoned him onwards to the illuminated place at her side.

“I have wondered what manner of man was hiding behind this fox-face all night, sir,” the lady greeted him, offering him the naked skin (pale as moonlight itself, despite the golden cast to the rest of her) of her palm. “It is rare to see such work in these parts.”

“You honor me, milady.” He bent low over her hand and spoke his name, and, impulsively, pressed a kiss to the milk-white inside of her wrist.

“A robin in the guise of a fox,” she said with all the richness of her voice, and Robin did not think he imagined the note of breathlessness in her answer. “It suits you well.”

“And you — you wear the face of a hunter, but the heart underneath sings yet a more tender song.” Her fingers were chill against his hand, still intimately held in his possession, and little by little warming under his touch. “And more lonely.”  

The lady showed her teeth at last, baring a pretty smile that smote at Robin’s heart like a blow. “What sharp eyes you have.”

He had pleased her, then, and the weight of her pleasure so focused upon him made him weak behind the knees. He had never felt so dizzy, drunk on the pure proximity of another, before.

“There are tales,” he said, and the words were pulled from him with a gasp as if by some unseen force, “of a great treasure within these walls, milady.”

Her eyes lit with excitement, warmer still. “Treasure? I thought the stories in the village ran a bit darker — curses, and heartbreak, and murder.”

“I know naught of that,” he said, shaking his head solemnly. “But I must believe the tales of treasure to be true, now that I have touched such loveliness with mine own hands.”

“You are very bold, my lord.”

“It is you who makes me so, milady.”

Something flickered behind the bird-beak mask, a tremor moving through her body full of longing. “Sharp eyes and a nimble tongue. A lady might find herself… _captivated_ by one with such charms.”

“No, it is I who should become your captive entire, if you would only command it.” And he meant it, terribly, seeming to give voice to his very soul and each word of it settling around them like a seal.

In that moment, too, a trick of the light — Robin turned his head, shamed by his forthright proposal, and before him the lady’s mask altered. Where once he had envisioned a songbird, velvet-clad and comely, now stood the grotesque caricature of a plague doctor, with its beak grotesquely elongated and rapacious and reeking of sickness.

He blinked, nearly falling back a step, and then the image resolved itself into that of a fine woman, bemasked, once again. _Foolishness and fancy_ , he scolded himself; he had not eaten that day, and anyone might take a well-made disguise for something stranger in the madness of the party.

The queen offered her other hand to him, drawing a sign in the air with a flick of her thumb and two fingers (an old blessing, Robin assumed, and smiled that even she was not immune to superstition) before clasping their palms together.

“Then let the masquerade be ended.” She lifted her voice so that the whole hall might hear. “I have found he who would be master — my worthy consort, once Earl of Huntingdon!”

The words rang like a clarion, met with silence and a sudden stillness, as if all life around them had been snuffed out at once. And then things moved too quick, and Robin found himself parted from the queen and half-spirited away towards the inner workings of the castle before he could so much as think.

“Tomorrow,” he heard from the far side of the room, the call crow-like in the way it hung about his ears. “Tomorrow, husband of mine.”

He had not, he realized, yet learned her true name.

.

.

They were wed the following day, meeting for the first time with masks removed in front of the altar. Her lips were the same red, and by those alone he should have recognized her — a beautiful creature indeed, with delicate, cunning features and a gown of midnight blue that felt like starlight under his hand.

The chapel was near-barren: no well-wishers were present save for the reverend and a scattering of manservants, guardsman, and other household help, their faces dour to a fault.

Flesh-to-flesh, they swore the vows, and _Regina_ fell from his lips with a worshipful sound (his name following a moment later in her voice, as sweet as if she had christened him anew), and a shudder seemed to pass through them both as they were bound by their oaths.  

“It is done,” the reverend pronounced, and retreated without further word, and with the wild tangle of their desire running over Robin knew not who led whom to their marriage bed, nor why it seemed to him that the scent of their chamber — and the taste of her kisses, hot and sharp to his mouth — should be tinged faintly with blood.  


	2. II

The sheets (so finely spun Robin could mistake them for spidersilk) were slick with their lovemaking, their fingers intertwined and idly exploring each other knuckle by knuckle, and it was then that Robin felt he could finally see the queen — his wife, his Regina — plainly, as any man would wish to see a woman in his bed and not some dark goddess.

She looked younger in the daylight, somehow softened now that her lip-color had worn away and her eyes were still heavy with sleep, and he felt a wrenching tenderness towards her. To be closed into this dreary place, biding the time alone with no company save for her servants and too many reminders of loss — no wonder she had sought a companion to comfort and keep her!

His feelings for her, as inexplicably as they had arrived, were true. They were like to each other, he supposed, and therefore had always been meant to be bonded in love and in rule.

“You have no family?” he asked gently, thumbing her fingers still.

 _Gone_ , she said, opening her eyes to him — an only child, and her mother and father long departed from this earth.

To bare what little truth of himself he might (and pray that she did not question the name Huntingdon and his noble connections too far), he confessed that he too was rootless, without a kinsman or ally to his name.

“We belong to each other, dear heart,” she said, laying her palm atop that very organ beating (quickening to her touch) in his chest, “and what more happiness could there be?”

He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, wanting her and not wanting her, for they were still in the first dawn of their life together and to be so greedy felt uncouth.

She, reading his thoughts in that uncanny way of hers, laughed and rose above him, settling her weight over his hips and stroking the whole hard length of him.

“Oh, we are well-matched, husband. I knew from the moment I saw your face — your fox-face,” she teased, bringing him near his peak with touch and breath alone.  

And so he had her again, and again, twisting her into the mattress and clamping her between his jaws with a growl as if she were a fine bird snatched into his mouth indeed.

.

.

Those first days passed languidly as they learned each other’s bodies, and Robin saw little of his new domain save for the bedchamber and the dining hall, and the latter only in the hours past midnight when they stumbled down the stairs to satisfy a hunger of another kind.

He was charmed but no longer so transfixed by the queen as he had been the night of the masquerade, and in time he could feel himself begin to grow restless. Not to be apart from Regina, for his appetite was ever-whetted there, but for fresher air, and the feeling of a crowd brushing at his shoulders (the promise of so many pockets waiting to be picked) and the chance to stretch his legs a while on familiar ground.

He should like to visit the marketplace, he decided, and perhaps he might find the last of the late summer wildflowers or some other small boon to bring home to his bride, to please her.

He dressed quickly and pulled on his boots — well, not _his_ , but one of the pairs nestled in the wardrobe among all the other vestments and shoes fitted precisely to his measurements. It was strange, to have such variety of textures and fabrics at his fingertips after living so long in common clothes, and perhaps stranger still that such a wardrobe had been produced for him in so little time.

(He would think, almost, that these clothes had belonged to another, and that he dressed now in the guise of a dead man. A chill touched the back of his neck, and he half-reached to cross himself before barking a laugh at his own superstition. No, no, it was not so; the queen had simply worked her singular magic here, as she did in all things.)

Descending from their tower, the one spire left intact after years of hard wear on the castle had reduced the others to shorn, split ends open to the sky, he chanced upon the lady, and gladdened that he should tell her of his day’s adventure himself.

She brightened at his approach, but some shadow seemed to pass over her brow as she took in his journeyman’s garb. “You seek to depart so soon, my love?” She tried to smile, but her mouth would not form the proper shape, so that her teeth merely clenched together as if in a sore temper. “Have I displeased you in some matter?”

“No, never,” he hurried to reassure her, moving to chafe her hands warmly in his. “I merely thought to take in this fine weather and bring something pretty home to you before the season completes it turn, and the earth falls barren and grey to us.”

She shook her head at his words, her eyes fixed somewhere lower than his face so that he could read nothing in her expression. He feared that he had wounded her greatly, and yet he did not understand why a short excursion to the village, a few hours of separation at most, should distress her so.

“Would you come with me, my love?” he asked, bending to kiss her hands as an amends for whatever quarrel he had stirred between them. “Forgive me, I had not thought you would want to accompany me on such an errand, but I would be heartened by your sweet company.”

“Oh, no, my Robin, I should not wish to travel so far today. A walk in our own grounds, perhaps, would suit me much better.”

A thought, half-formed, pressed at his tongue. “Do you… never leave the castle yourself?”

“Oh, time and again,” she answered vaguely, but her cheeks had regained some color, and the playful note had returned to her voice. She traced a finger down his sternum, following bone and vein, and all his body trembled in response. “But we have everything we need between us, do we not?”

He could not help but groan softly, all new-made desire — what agony it was, what glorious fever, to love and be loved by this woman!

He nearly had her there, in the open hall, but she stayed his hands and led him upwards, back to their tower, both of them hastening so that Robin hardly felt his feet ascend the steps. To the bed, where he let himself fall, weak with need as Regina climbed atop him, her skirts shrouding both of their forms as she worked to loosen his trousers.

There was the sense, once more, that one of them had perhaps drawn blood from the other in their haste, but then the queen’s mouth lowered to his stomach, to the vulnerable skin of his thigh, and he forgot all else. He sank his hands into her hair and drew their faces level, so that he might see her pleasure even as he earned his own.

This, they could not do gently.

His muscles ached with the effort of his thrusting, of holding them both in balance, and the queen in her turn clutched at him with her own bruising force, leaned down to nip at his earlobe and whisper, the rhythm broken with soft gasps, “I should grow so lonely without you near. Keep to the castle, husband.”

“Yes,” he agreed, crying out in the height of his passion, all control surrendered to their joining. “Yes, my love!” His body was caught full under hers, spasming in answer to the rocking of her hips against his, like an animal — finally — giving way to the snare that held him.


	3. III

Robin would almost think the servants of the castle lacked tongues, so silent and morose they were, except that he sometimes heard voices passing through the walls, as fleet and fragile as shadows. He could never quite catch the words, nor saw any trace of their owners, but he ascribed it to the strange acoustics of the place playing its tricks on him and would forget his vague feelings of unease until the voices sounded again.

He wandered the grounds often now, preferring to be out-of-doors though the days were growing colder and the sun miserly with how many hours of light it would spare him. He knew the twisting paths into the forest, and the well-worn frame of the stables, and each afternoon sought some new corner to explore and master, for there was no shortage of delights to find even with the dying of the year so soon upon them, and the land surrounding the castle stretched on and on, so that he still had not found any boundary.

Regina did not often join him, and though he wondered at her insistence on staying so near to the dreary walls of her keep, he did not press her — it was selfish of him, perhaps, but he liked too much to warm himself in her welcome at his return, regaling her with dramatic recountings of his meeting with a hawk, or the small plot of curiously blue flowers he had found in the undergrowth, now well past their season, as she lay her head upon his chest and traced lazy patterns over his skin.

“It does me good,” she would say, “to see how our little kingdom pleases you.”

And it was a pleasant life, Robin would agree, with its easy and predictable rhythms carrying him through weeks, and then months of his new station at Regina’s side. He could not fully dispel, however, the nagging feeling that he was not suited for this idleness and that, sooner or later, even the vast grounds of the castle would not hold enough for him.

He would want some other occupation for his thoughts and hands, some different paths to tread and company to greet besides that of his dear wife.

(For she was dear, and it was for love of her that Robin had not made to leave the castle again, though the urge was like an itch burning constantly under his skin.)

He hid his melancholy as best he could, but his mood began to grow greyer with the weather as the realization struck deep that he should be truly, utterly confined within the walls once winter hit in full. And as the days darkened earlier — imperceptibly at first, then seeming all at once — and quickened his return to the lights of the castle, to Regina’s arms, he found less and less to distract him from his despairing.

Once attuned to the inner workings of the castle, learning its little oddities like one learns the curve of a crooked banister, his mind went on seeking to exercise itself elsewhere, and there was near nothing left to seize upon except for the mystery of the voices, which had begun to plague him with increasing persistence.

“Listen,” he said, half-hushing Regina in the middle of their nightly rituals, when the world should have been closed around them as tightly as a fist, admitting no other trespasser than the glow of the full moon. “Is some servant out of bed at this hour?”

“It is probably the wind, or some animal calling down the moon,” Regina answered quietly after a moment’s pause, having done as bidden and listening well. “You know how sound carries on a night such as this.”

This was reason, Robin knew, and yet it did not satisfy; he had never known a beast, nor any draught, to sound so close to human, nor to so thoroughly haunt a place as his voices (whatever figments they might truly be) were wont to do.

“You are right, I am sure, my dear,” he murmured, willing his body to find its peace and speed him to sleep, but it was not to be.

His mind was alight still, insistent on puzzling out some better explanation for the mystery and so following his errant trails of thought around and around until he was dizzied, as lost as the storybook children who were said to have chased breadcrumbs through a vast wilderness.

Even now, if he rose and hunted through every corner of the tower, he was certain he would find no easy culprit for the sounds, perhaps not even a shred marking their existence — yet there  _was_ some substance behind them, of this he was sure in his gut. But always they seemed to be coming from somewhere deep below, climbing upwards through brick and stone ever so faintly, as if from the very earth itself.

Or from the cellars, maybe, though they were so distant it beggared belief that he should be able to hear anything that passed so far beneath them. Still, the thought needled at Robin as much as he would silence it, for he had not yet ventured to those reaches of the castle and knew not what lurked there — indeed, he knew so little of what the other unused wings and spires might hold that he felt suddenly ashamed of fashioning himself as master of the place.

_I must remedy this_ , he thought,  _and soon, for my own sanity if for no other purpose._

(And another voice, this one familiar and not so unwelcome, for it was his from another life, crept forward to remind him:  _you came here seeking treasure, and have forgotten your true nature for far too long, thief_.)

Regina stirred a little beside him and sighed, the fullness of her breath telling him that she also was withheld from sleep.

“My love, what manner of things do you keep in the cellars?” he asked.

There was a pause, and a subtle hitch of breathing before Regina rolled to face him, her eyes glinting silver as they caught the moonlight. “Why, I hardly know myself!”

Robin hummed in answer, disappointed, and she continued. “They have not been kept well these past years — not since Father died, and the castle passed to me — and I could not say when last someone chanced to go so far below the main house, with the foundations as ruined as they must be now.”

“I wonder…” he started, slowly, for the idea was still only half-formed between his teeth. “I wonder if there is something there that disturbs me.”

“There is a great brood of bats that have made their roost in the top of the east tower — what remains of it, at least — for years now. Perhaps vermin of another kind have taken similar root in the underground passages.”

“Aye, that is likely it,” he said, somewhat soothed by the idea and feeling the first tendrils of restfulness advance upon him at last. “I shall go there myself tomorrow and see.”

“Oh, but send your man to do it. You need not trouble yourself with such matters — you are lord here, not some mason or laborer that you must roughen your hands for your daily bread.”

There was an edge to her words, the sharpness of a queen’s command, and Robin suppressed a flinch as she sought out his wrist under the blanket and wrapped her fingers around him, pressing as if to read the lay of the bones.

She had touched too close to the truth, there, that all of his nobility was nothing more than a masquerade — and if she knew, what did it mean that she had not yet acted against him?

He had known what the villagers whispered of, the murmurs of nightshade and how death stalked in her wake, but this was the first he had ever feared her hold over him, her very presence in their bed.

His voice was remarkably steady when he spoke. “Of course, I will leave it to the servants if you wish it.”

The queen’s eyes looked black in the darkness and altered somehow, as if not entirely her own. Then, with a catlike blink, her face changed again to the one he knew and loved so intimately, and her grasp on him loosened into a lover’s caress, drawing his palm up to her mouth to kiss it.

(And in her kiss against the sensitive crease of his thumb, he felt the keenness of her teeth.)

Robin let her claim his hand with no other words spoken between them, and counted the hours until morning in silence and fitful half-slumber while Regina slipped into the heaviness of sleep beside him.  
.

.

He did not raise the issue again in daylight, knowing it foolish to sow discord and risk his wife’s displeasure when the matter was ridiculous in the first place. Voices arising from the cellar, indeed — it was pure madness, and he wondered if the entire night before had seen him fall into a sort of half-dream, so that all of his senses had been muddled, and the natural sights before him were made distorted, as if viewed through a dark pane of glass.

His imagination was becoming as restless as his feet, and if he could not find a way to calm them both, the winter would stray very near to the edge of being unbearable.

After breakfast, he brushed a kiss to Regina’s forehead and excused himself, meaning to walk a bit in the forest while a few saffron- and madder-dyed leaves yet clung stubbornly to the trees. Instead, he found himself bypassing the hall doors completely to cross into the east wing, following the narrow curves of stairway after stairway towards the wreck of its tower.

As he climbed, the stones laid into each step began to feel unstable under his weight, so that he must pick his way carefully past loose shards of rock and grooves worn slick-smooth by damp until at last, he reached the crest and the sky lay bare above him.

The floor, pockmarked from years of unimpeded rainfall, was thick with bat droppings just as the queen had indicated, and Robin searched what little of the original roof remained until he spied a clutch of black little shapes rocking in the joins of two badly splintered rafters above.

For a moment, the discovery lightened him and he admired the view that the broken walls permitted, so high above the ground as to make his lungs ache a bit. But there was a bitterness under the beauty that made itself known all too quickly, so that he had to swallow hard and turn away from the threshold between stone and open air, and all the freedom it promised.

“I bid you good welcome, sirs,” he said, with a mocking half-bow towards the bats, “for you are like to be the only guests I shall entertain here.”

He spoke in frustration, the words cast into the solitude of the tower (for it was better to voice them here than where he might regret them), and then, miraculously, answered:

“Had I known you yearned so for company, I would have summoned something far more suitable for you than these creatures, husband.”

He turned to face Regina, expecting another quarrel or worse, but she smiled at him gently and moved to take his arm and intertwine it with both of her own.

“I know you are not accustomed to the reclusive life we leave here, and it chafes at you so that there is a pall over everything you look upon.”

Robin started to protest, but Regina shook her head to quieten him. “No, no, you need not defend your nature. I know what manner of man I married, and it is, in part, your liberated heart that I love so dearly.”

She raised a hand to his chest, outlining the ridge of muscle than ran below his shoulder, and in so doing, disrupted the steady beating of the heart that she professed to love. He stifled a groan as his entire body awakened at her touch — later, later, when they had returned to solid footing, he would bear her to the bed himself.

“And so I make a gift to you,” she continued, and produced a chain with a single weathered key, its head cut strangely sharp, from the folds of her dress. She hung it about his neck (he had to lower his head some so that she could reach, and her slightness charmed him anew) and held the key up to him, saying, “This will give you entrance to every room in the castle, and whatever treasures lay within. It is not much, I know, but i hope it will ease your sorrow some.”

The metal was cold against his skin except for the small, scattered points where it had come into contact with the lady’s own warmth — those links of chain  _burned_ , and not unpleasantly.

“You know me well, lady, and make it impossible for me to sorrow,” he said, and meant it. “I should be glad to learn more of what place I am master of, even as I learned you.”

She blushed prettily in response, and made to return to the castle proper, stopping only at the edge of the stairs to call back to him, with her face half-obscured in shadow, “Only have a care, my love, that you invite no harm upon yourself.”

He looked at her quizzically, and she made a small sign to the crumbling stones that surrounded them.

“This castle is old and in much disrepair, even as you see. Explore, if you will, but do not risk your neck for whatever paltry offerings these ruins are like to divulge to you.”

Her warning, on another day, might have chilled his mood, but he merely murmured his agreement and watched her depart, left alone again with his thoughts and with the cool promise of the key where it pressed like a brand against the hollow of his breast, ready to unlock the untold secrets of his little kingdom and of those who had lived — live — under its protection. 

Tomorrow, he would begin. 


	4. IV

A master key, skeleton-shaped, that tumbled the lock of door after door in the castle, and Robin felt like nothing so much as a thief again — and, gods help him, he reveled in that simple pleasure of stealing through rooms left long-forgotten to rifle through house regalia that was both his, by law of marriage, and decidedly foreign to him.

At least this time he was making honest work of it and thus had no need to be stealthy, for it was a raucous undertaking: he banged through crates of old draperies and linens, moved dust-ridden furniture to examine the floorboards, cursed at rats underfoot and the cobwebs that stuck to his hands no matter how he tried to escape them.

From tower to kitchens and back again, he walked the length and breadth of the castle to slake his curiosity, and he had nothing more to show for it than a set of bruised-silver candlesticks and a broken (though once finely-crafted) mirror worked in gold.

The family had no jealously-guarded treasures, then — save for his wife, and he had won her already — and yet this lack of an inheritance did not trouble him as he thought it might. He was happy again, to have even this fruitless work to occupy him in the hours between waking and the heady nights spent in Regina’s embrace.

Though he was no mason (or laborer, as Regina had reminded him), he played with the idea of resurrecting some of the rooms that had fallen into disuse and various states of collapse. He could not mend the worst of the damage, but he might make the place more comely and warm, and if they were ever to welcome children into their lives, well…

He hazarded to mention this nascent plan to his wife, fearing another rebuke about his unsuitability for the work now that he was master, but to his delight, she blessed the endeavor with a kiss, and even sat down with him to assist with a rough mapping of the three wings and their individual passages.

Before he gathered what tools he might beg from the servants for his own use, however, Robin conceded to the prick of dissatisfaction that would not cease to hound him: for, of course, he had not yet surveyed _all_ inches of the castle.

The cellars.

He had avoided them, in thought and deed, since that night when the mere mention of them had awoken something near-sinister in Regina’s countenance, but here those voices reared themselves again and insisted upon his answer.

Their every joining as husband and wife had been soft — as idyllic as he had never believed his life could be — since she had pressed the skeleton key to his skin, and ( _a dangerous thought, edging at betrayal_ ) she had not expressly forbidden the underground to him, after all.

She need never know that he had ventured there, if it worried her, and that decided him.

Quick, quick now, and he would be back before the bell sounded for the evening meal. He hastily prepared a lantern so that he might light the torches below himself, and set for the farthest stairway to the west to journey down until he hit the solid rock of the cellar floor.

(The steps, though dark and somewhat worn by their decades of travel, had seemed to hold no more risk than any other alley he had passed over.)

A great coldness bled through the sole of his boot as he searched for some torch to better illuminate the path, soon progressing into a chill that ran the length of both his legs. _Winter come early_ , he thought distractedly, and hastened to complete the job and return to the warmth of the upper halls.

There was only a single door before him, a great oaken slab scarred with age, and, transferring a flame from the lantern in his hand to the sconce above, he freed the key from his neck and slid it into the hole, cocking his wrist to release the very last bolt he would meet in this place.

And… the blasted thing turned not even a fraction, the lock resolutely resisting his attempt at entry. He tried a different alignment, a new flick of pressure, but it was futile — his key was not the right counterpart for this particular door, though it defied all reason.

What words, precisely, had Regina used to deflect him from the cellars? Ah, he had no time to parse them, even if he could recall — the hour was growing late, and he would be missed if he dallied over this cursed new riddle any longer.

Leaving the flambeau above the door to burn itself out, he collected his hand lantern and turned for the stairs. No sooner than he had mounted the first step, an immense thundering shook him from all sides, tremors that struck up from the ground beneath him in the same moment that the ceiling beams threatened to collapse, so that he missed his footing and pitched forward, unable to hold his balance.

_The sky was falling, and he with_ _it_. 

 He landed badly on his right foot, feeling the ankle twist unnaturally under the full force of his weight. The lantern had been dashed from his grasp, and now small trails of flames licked over the stones surrounding him, burning lowly — an astonishing, sickening blue — in the fresh spill of oil.

The terrible shaking had ceased as suddenly as it had descended, and he managed save his cloak from catching fire with a quick snatch of his fingers, though he was still too stunned to try to raise himself from his awkward sprawl over the steps.

And, somewhere high above, the low note of Regina’s voice summoning him to her side rang out, and, even as every wolf was compelled to howl its longing when the first sliver of moon appeared to the night, he knew (he feared) he must cry his answer to her call.


	5. V

His ankle did not hurt much as he leveraged himself off of the ground, but in testing his weight, Robin felt something in it give, which could only be sign of some deeper injury. He cursed his bad luck, but there was nothing for it but to begin limping up the stairs as best he might so that Regina would not become so impatient that she investigate and find him _here_.

It was delicate going, between his weak foot and the loss of his lantern, and he had to feel his way up each step and make certain of the foothold before advancing, lest he take another — and worse — tumble.

Regina’s voice, at first ghostly-thin and then growing stronger, more insistent, as he climbed, seemed to float down to him at odd intervals, harrying him onwards. He finally reached the precipice of the main floor, returned to level ground and heat and light that momentarily dazzled his senses. The pervasive chill of the cellars dissipated as well, and so thawed, he met the full throb of his ankle, his already awkward gait becoming more and more of a pained hobble as he approached the central hall.

The queen stood with her back to him, draped in brilliant red, but must have heard the dragging of his sorry body into the room and twisted to peer behind her. For a moment, Robin pulled to a standstill and could only admire the lovely curve of her neck, angled towards him just so, and the piercing edge of her eyes fixed full upon him.

“I am here, milady—forgive my lateness. Your clutz of a husband has turned his ankle on a loose stair,” he called to her, and he was glad at least that he need not pretend his sheepishness nor the injury that had delayed him — both were true enough, and worsening under her scrutiny. “It bears my weight, but not well, and I was too far from the hall to summon help before now.”  

The queen gentled in at instant upon seeing how he struggled even to hobble to her now. “Ah, poor man!” she exclaimed, and hurried forward to offer him her arm. He accepted it gratefully, leaning into her with a small moan so that she squeezed his hand in sympathy.

Though his main attention was focused on relieving the pressure on his foot, he did not miss the way Regina’s gaze flicked past him to mark the direction from whence he had come, and something tightened, sharpened, in her face.  

 _I could have been anywhere in the west wing_ , he thought feverishly; _she should not suspect me so, and yet… it is like she knows my mind, and my ventures, better than even I._

There was a tense expanse of time where all seemed frozen in anticipation as they stood, locked together and feeling the movements of each other’s lungs, breathing in rhythmic counterpoint. 

And then Regina was commanding a serving man to help Robin to their chamber while she went on ahead, and Robin mentally cursed whomever had designed the castle and their obvious penchant for staircases, as now he would have to brave yet another before he could rest.

Even using the servant’s shoulder as a crutch, he was reduced to hopping on his good leg, and their progress up the steps to the tower — never before had it seemed so far removed from the mortal plane — was slow and agonizing. By the time they reached the royal chamber, he was drenched with sweat from his efforts and had to be helped into the bed.

Regina had arranged a score of pillows that he might be propped upright against the headboard, with still more positioned to brace his leg and raise his foot. He had not quite understood that the queen meant to tend to him herself — of course, there was no physician here — until she went to remove his boots. First the left, which slipped off readily, and then she tried to ease the right off with the same soft motion, but his inflamed ankle protested and it soon became clear that the boot would not slide free without some force.

In the end, it took two men (as silent and inscrutable as ever) to wrench it loose while the queen held his leg steady, and Robin lay back gritting his jaw and breathing profane oaths against all the gods against this new agony. When he came back to himself a bit, the pain abating in increments, he found that husband and wife were now alone, the servants having retreated after performing their singular duty.

Regina brushed a few damp locks of hair away from his forehead, tracing her hand down to the blade of his shoulder in one soothing motion. She stopped, then, and asked, “May I, my love?”, as if she wanted his permission to continue her examination — to cause him further torture, more like.

He nodded, and she slowly removed his sock, and even this small movement was unbearably sensitive and set him hissing again. Indeed, his ankle was badly swollen, the foot equally lumpen and strange in appearance (like a child’s crude drawing, the mere approximation of a limb), and his fair skin was already mottled with purpling bruises from toe to lower calf.

Regina settled on the bed beside his leg with a disapproving click of her tongue and went to work, helping him flex and circle the joint and all the while palpating the area with knowing fingers to see what made him wince.

To distract himself, Robin turned his thoughts back to the cellar, to the impenetrable door, and — and then he remembered what had precipitated his fall to begin with: that great thundering earthquake of stone all around him.

He raised himself better on the bed and questioned, intently, “Tell me, wife; what was that terrible shudder that I felt before, as if the whole castle were coming down around my ears?”

Regina’s eyes flickered to his, and her hand stilled momentarily over his ankle. “Oh, part of the easternmost tower collapsed, and damaged one of the outer battlements with it.”

She resumed her probing, and though she turned her attention from him, her next words skewered him with deadly precision. “It was well you were not there, husband, and caught in the destruction. You might not have escaped with your life.”

Before he could respond ( _and how could he respond, for her subtle accusations were well-deserved?_ ), she sighed in satisfaction and shifted his aching foot from its perch in her lap to the nest of bedpillows, declaring, “The bone is sound, and nothing displaced. A bad sprain, but it will mend well with care.”

The queen busied herself at her vanity, gathering all manner of possets and potions into her arms and returning to the bed to minister — _or inflict_ , Robin thought grimly, though no doubt he was being uncharitable — whatever treatments she deemed appropriate. She kneaded an herbal liniment into the skin around the joint, explaining the healing properties of comfrey and calendula with such an air of scholarly rapture that he could not help but tease.

“You should have been a chemist, my dear,” he said, reaching a hand to her knee and pressing it fondly.

Regina returned his smile, but the peace between them was short lived. “Ah, but I warned you away from the cellars!”

Well, there was no more use in denying the deed, then.

“I see I must defer to my wife’s wisdom in all things,” he answered with a bow of his head and a clear note of bitterness that made the queen sigh again.

“Let us not quarrel, Robin — enough injury has been done for one day.” She began to wrap his foot with a long strip of linen, crisscrossing the length until his leg was half-mummified, like some dead thing. “I meant not to scold you, but you must remember that there were those before you who met… accidents in the castle, and fared much worse than you. I feared for your safety, that is all.”

It was, Robin thought, the first time the queen had addressed him simply as _Robin_ , without any further modifiers or endearments, and something about the gesture touched him deeply. As did the reminder that she had lost much in her young life, and now he longed to take her into his arms and help her forget, help her to feel just how _alive_ he — they — were.

“Indeed, I had forgotten the bad luck of this place,” he admitted penitently. “You again prove your wisdom, my lady, and I would do well to heed you better.”

She grinned at him, tucking the final edge of linen under the rest of the bandage and signaling that she had finished. “Then start now, husband. I must play nurse and servant to you so that you do not strain your leg while it mends.” She moved the tray of her medicines to safer territory, so that they would not be overturned, and crawled towards him until she could straddle his hips. “And you must do all my bidding, to heal well.”

“What is your bidding, my lady?”

She lowered her lips to the sensitive skin of his temple, his ear. “Drink this draught, and be cured,” she murmured, and took him tenderly by the mouth.

He moaned into the kiss, and this time the sound came not from his pain but from wild pleasure. Soon her kisses were focused lower, trailing down his breastbone and spreading out with his ribs as Regina shifted off of his hips and moved backwards to better attend his pulse points.

“It is well you are not squeamish, my love,” he gasped, when she nipped the delicate flesh under his thigh. “My ankle looks a gruesome sight — all blackened and bloated, as if I were one of the living dead! — and might frighten away a lesser woman.”

“As if I could ever find any part of you gruesome, husband,” she said, breaking off from his thigh to draw level, eye-to-eye, with him again. Shy now, she set a palm to his heart and confessed her worry. “You will forgive me if, in the heat of it, I do not know how to be gentle.”

Her touch again wandered, leading to the scratch she had seared into the crest of his shoulder several nights before. He raised his thumb to her lips, pressing the old scar that cut through the skin there.

“Then be not gentle, and love me well, and I will do the same to you.”

(In the morning, in the morning, they will ache, but tonight they are blooded hot and hungry, and neither will be able to find rest until they have taken their fill.)


	6. VI

True to her word, the queen insisted that Robin stay abed to rest himself, not allowing him to so much as lower his leg from its cradle of pillows or stand, well-supported, to pass water. Such confinement should have depressed him — for hadn’t all this trouble began with his need for freedom, with his desire to live as unbridled (even by love) as he was used to? — but he found that he enjoyed how Regina doted on him and the impossibly domestic tableau they made together, so unexpectedly.

She fed him teas to ease his pain and hung bundles of herbs, like talismans, from the four corners of the split rafter above; she amused him with stories, spun out as finely and cleverly as golden threads, of the mischiefs she had lived, growing up in this wayward place; she massaged his calf and knee when they threatened to cramp, and made sure of the health of the rest of his body with soft caresses as he drowsed the afternoons away.

He had hardly seen his wife so animated, so relentlessly charming and flushed with happiness as if she had discovered the blush of her girlhood again. All of their exchanges were light, wonder-filled, the way they had been for a brief period when they had been only newly-wed, and Robin thought no more on what had possessed him to hunt through the bowels of the castle, searching for something to claim beyond as if all imaginable riches were not already held in his grasp.

The swelling in his foot slowly tempered under Regina’s learned touch, the pain not so forthright, and after the third day of complete leisure, he wanted to try his weight on it before it grew too stiff. 

“Let me hobble a few steps before I forget how to work these legs,” he insisted, and she finally acquiesced when he promised to go no further than the door frame or over-tire himself. She wrapped his ankle again to straighten and stabilize the joint, and set him on his feet — it was uncomfortable, but he was able to shuffle his way around the room without aid and felt the relief of stretching his muscles.

Day by day, he built his endurance under Regina’s watchful eye, and in another week he was moving almost as normal and could tolerate the jolting motion necessitated by the steep staircase that isolated them from the rest of the house, even though it meant leaning heavily on the banister and using a slightly awkward stagger-step to descend.

“No more the damsel locked in the tower,” he sighed contentedly to the queen when they reached the bottom and entered the hall, resuming his courtly duty of escorting the lady to dinner on his arm.

“And what will you do with your newfound independence, husband?” she asked without looking at him, plainly not sharing the same sense of celebration over the event.

Indeed, her countenance had paled some during his recovery, her girlish cheer becoming moody by turns as he drifted father away from their bed, the unspoken seed of discord re-sown between them every time he sought even one more stride of distance from Regina’s side.

She had liked him to be so near, it seemed, and now that he could while his days away as he would elsewhere in the castle, she mourned those peaceful, blissful hours they had spent intertwined, doing nothing more than idling, than pleasing themselves in whatever small ways they dreamt up, devoting each word and motion formed to the comfort and worship of the other.

And there would be still more hours spent doing just that, for Robin loved her well and would lie with his lady, would chase away the melancholy that furrowed her brow with quiet acts (he could do more than ravish her; he could prove himself a gentleman such as deserved her) as much as she would allow, and yet he must keep his own occupations as master, as lord, as well.

He wanted to repair the portion of the east wing closest to their chamber, to make the old parlors more habitable so that Regina might be less restricted in the castle herself; he even tried to involve her in the project, so that they might pass the days together — she reading, or recording her knowledge of herblore, while he mortared a better floor and patched the holes in the walls.

She shook her head over the proposal but took his hand gently, impressing upon him her gratitude that he had considered her at all. It felt like he had won conciliation between them when she said, “I have other work, my Robin; you shall have to surprise me with the fruits of your labor when the time comes.”

He laughed, his heart and conscience eased at once by her good humor. “I pray those fruits be sweet as apples for you, my lady.”  
.  
  
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Winter arrived in full, with its howling wolf-winds and heavy snows, and an inescapable chill settled into the bones of the castle no matter how hotly they kept the fireplaces burning.

Robin made slow progress in the eastern rooms, alternately bruising his hands against stones and warming them at the hearth to fight off chilblains, and Regina stayed tucked away in their tower (as like a songbird as when they had met), which he had to concede was the best and wisest place to weather the season for how it was protected from the worst of the cold.

They spent a not-inconsiderable measure of this time finding new ways to exchange the heat of their bodies (and not always by means of mating), passing the long nights burrowed under the coverlets like twinned animals in hibernation.

But all was not as well as it appeared, for voices had begun to creep again through the darkness and trouble Robin’s mind. He had half-forgotten this particular mystery in the busyness of the preceding weeks, and now it revived itself with more insistence, with the intensity of an imperative, than ever before.

They chased his sleep away, as exhausted as he was, to speak with him, though he could never translate the erratic sounds into language. And again the voices made to draw him down, down into the very depths of the castles to that cellar door that had confounded the key he still wore chained about his neck.

“Tell me, tell me what you mean by haunting me,” he groaned to no answer on his fourth night of wakefulness in a row.

Regina stirred at his appeal, slurring, “Did you say something, husband?”

“No, no,” he hushed, petting her until she fell back to slumber.

He slipped from the bed, careful to keep the blankets snug around his wife so that she would not be disturbed by the cold, and walked the floor of their tower rooms end to end in an effort to earn his rest.

There was nothing to mark on his patrol — no windows left unlatched and creaking in the wind, no servant making mischief, not even a sliver of moonlight — and yet the hot breath of his disembodied messengers curled against his ear, calling to him their unknown demands.

Unless, perhaps, he _did_ know what this haunting meant: he must revisit the cellars, and this time gain his entry, whether by honest methods or not.  
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He slept late into the next day, so deep into the morning that Regina wondered if he were ill.

“Not ill,” he murmured as she checked his forehead for signs of a fever, “but I shall beg this day off from work all the same.”

Regina agreed, and they passed the afternoon in companionable quiet, doing what homely things they might in the closeness of the room. The queen insisted on dressing for dinner even though the serving men were their only audience, and she commandeered Robin’s attention from his blueprints to ask him to help pin up her hair.

He nearly protested, for he liked the way her loosened tresses brushed softly against her breasts when she moved, but he could never resist the opportunity to play with the ends, to stroke and comb his fingers through her silkiness, and so he joined her at the vanity. 

Handing him a gilt box of straight pins, she wound and knotted the black strands into intricate shapes and showed him where to place the clasps against her scalp. Almost without thinking, Robin palmed one of the spare pins, disappearing it up his sleeve as he would with a coin or some other small bauble he had lifted from the rich, back in his thieving days.

 _A_ _hairpin_ , he mused, _makes an excellent lockpick, should the original key be inaccessible._  
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He had urged the wine on his wife as they dined, pouring generously for both of them but discreetly disposing of his own, and if Regina suspected anything amiss, she drank deeply enough that it did not matter, in the end. She fell asleep before he had even managed to settle her in their bed, so that he had to clumsily undress and reclothe her himself and tuck her under the blankets like a babe.

He had the decency, at least, to see her resting comfortably before he set off again, hastening down the steps of the tower, and stopping only to prepare a lantern on his way through the hall towards the stairs that led into the cellars. He made himself slacken his pace some on the descent — his ankle still ached with too much use, and he must not be withheld from his mission, this time.

Robin could feel, acutely, the metal of the pin trapped between the seam of his shirt and the goose-fleshed skin beneath, and he worked his arm in deliberate movements until the silver shaft reemerged into his hand.

A shard of glass crunched under his heel (but only a shard — someone had cleaned up the rest of his shattered lamp), signaling that he was drawing near, and there, the oaken door stood before him, waiting for his skill to coax it open.

He set his lantern at his feet, not bothering to light the sconce this time, and knelt to the keyhole, inserting the hairpin with a practiced roll of his wrist.

Metal kissed metal, and suddenly the skeleton key that hung over his heart burned red-hot, as if some spark had caught and sent it up in flames; he yelped, wrenching the chain free of his neck and throwing it from him, though the damage to his chest was done.

He touched his fingers to the raw wound, feeling its keenly-cut edges arranged in a perfect copy of the key’s head, and shuddered: it was like some great, warning eye had settled upon him for just an instant, marking the act (the treason against his queen) he was about to commit.

He was made Judas already; so let the door, and the last secrets of this place, fall before him, and piss on the consequences.

He focused on the length of the pin, probing the lock to check its design, and gave himself over to the calm of the work, his muscles remembering how to jerk and flick at each section of the tumbler until, to his honest surprise (to his dread), the bolt released.

The door swung open while Robin was still on his knees, and he carefully moved his lantern across the threshold to illuminate the room. It took a moment for his vision to adjust to the darkness, and then —

His hand forked the horned sign against the evil eye, against death and the devil, of its own accord, a terrible moan rising in his throat to make him gag.

 _Unfortunate girl_ , they had said, _to have won and lost three husbands in the same span of years._

The bodies, hung at intervals along the walls like an exquisitely brutalist collection of paintings, were so well-preserved that they might be mistaken for living beings if not for the horror of their mouths, distorted into the shape of screams so piercing he could hear their echoes even now.

Where their hearts should have been, their chests were sunken, and Robin could not bear to look too closely at the red wounds, so like to the size of his wife’s dear fists when she clenched them in anger, in desire.

Ah, the voices, the voices, of his love’s three husbands, and another man and woman who must have been her parents, for they each held something of Regina’s proud bearing, and _(gods forgive them_ ) they had each been crowned with a hammered ring of nails driven through the empty folds of their eyes — he recognized their voices at last.

In the center of the room stood a cabinet of many drawers, emitting its two-note song, and though he half-knew what he would find, Robin forced himself forward on numb legs to see what lay within.

 _Hearts_.

Their living hearts, as yet beating, and as beautiful as the queen’s lips drawn into a crimson smile. Five hearts in five drawers, and a sixth slot reserved for his.


	7. VII

Another man might have run to arm himself — a butcher’s knife, a fire poker, something wrought in cold iron as the stories (no mere superstition, now) dictated — and confronted the witch-queen even as she slept, taking her head and burning the body, scattering even the finger-bones to be carried away by the bitter winds.

Another man might have sought escape, breaching the castle walls at last and riding for the distant lights of town crying warning, crying madness, until the others rallied to his defense.

Another man… but Robin was not those men, and he stood transfixed in his horror, beyond sight and sensation and reason in the very middle of the chamber, the clutch of hearts before him pulsing a harmonious rhythm, so prettily kept (each a treasure) in their individual drawers.

He tasted blood, unsure of the source, and wondered that death should be so clean as to leave no traces on the stone. No stains, no marks of violence, save for the bodies themselves, and even they held a sense of precision and orderliness in how they were mounted on the walls that was indeed unearthly, and gruesome, and ( _pray mercy_ ) pleasing to the eye.

He knew, of course, that the lady — his love — would come for him, and so she did.

Her tread was so light that he did not mark her approach until a familiar hand settled on his shoulder, cupping the blade and gently guiding him in a half-circle so they might meet face-to-face, as if for the first time.

( _Oh, that they might return to that first night, that they might forget…_ )

“Why, my Robin, you have split your lip,” she said with concern, reaching with her thumb to staunch the little flow of blood, and Robin touched his tongue to the place, feeling the rent in the skin and the pressure of his wife’s finger-pad on the other side. He must have bitten hard to break the skin, though he knew not when it had happened.

“You have been careless, husband,” she continued, speaking into the lulls of his silence. She yet held his face in her hands, peering up at him with her dark eyes. “I found your key abandoned outside the door — see, the chain has been broken.”

She showed him where the clasp had snapped in his rush to loose it from his neck, and, in doing so, revealed the flat of her palm to him, where he could see the milky skin was broken by a welt, the exact key-head brand that had been seared into his chest.

“It called you to me,” he said with dawning understanding, his voice hoarse and thin.

“In its way,” she agreed, “but I have no need of any instrument to bind us together. I know your heart, my love, even as I know my own.”

She let the chain fall to the ground between their feet and cocked her head to him, waiting expectantly, as if they were exchanging words about the weather.

Robin tried to step backwards, increasing the space between their bodies even a fraction, but he was effectively pinned by the cabinet of hearts, the drawers he had left so damningly wide. “Why did you give me the key?” he asked, for if he must die, he would first have the answers. “By the saints, why did you tempt me to find this… this _place_?”

There was a note of true anguish in his asking, for, even now, he loved her, even now he wanted only to lay his head against her lap to be soothed.

The queen laughed, and it was a fearsome sound — he had never known her to be cruel, to be so mercenary. “Would you have stayed otherwise?”

He looked at her dumbly, and Regina calmed, her face sad and lovely again without any sign of the deadly humor she had just displayed.

She shook her head at him. “Always you were searching for something in these old walls — your great treasure from the stories, perhaps — and would never rest until you overturned every rock yourself.” She gestured to her collection of hearts, as if the answer was plain. “All you men are the same, in the end.”

“They wanted to leave the castle, and so you made sure they never could.”

“The first time —” her voice caught on the syllable, and she swallowed hard. “The first time was an accident, truly. We were so happy, and then he was taken from me, and it was too much to be borne.”  

“And the others?”

“The castle demands a master, whether I would have one or no,” the queen said. “And so they came to me willingly — vain, and greedy, and brutish men — and I dealt with them as one must deal with any beast.”

“You _killed_ them,” Robin spat, the word as cutting as a knife.

“What sharp eyes you have, husband,” she said mockingly, dangerously, and he saw again the witch-queen and not the woman in her countenance. “And what sharp teeth I have, for those that deserve them.”

“But why must you keep them here? Why can no one _leave_ this cursed place?”

“It’s safer this way — the castle is a protection.”

Robin's gaze lingered on the cabinet, noting just how many dozens of drawers waited to capture yet more unworthy souls.  _For you or for them?_ he wondered, and found that it did not matter enough to ask. 

She advanced on him, the velvet of her skirts making music against the stone floor. He could see, now, that they were both trembling. “Tell me, Robin, has your curiosity finally been satisfied?”

“Gods, yes,” he groaned, powerless before her in so many ways. “Will you take my heart, too?”

“Why, you swore to me that I already possessed it, my love. Do you not remember our oaths, and every affirmation of love made in our marriage bed?”

Would that he _didn’t_ remember how they had sworn themselves to each other, over and over, or that he could ignore how her mere presence aroused him, even now, even in this nightmarish room.

“I meant every oath,” he confessed, too overwrought to play at deceit any longer. “Gods, but I love you, Regina, even if it marks me for death.”

She smiled at the sound of her name, like one who has hungered long to hear it. “My thief-lord, with your house built of lies and your trickster charms. You wore that fox-head to my ball, and I knew I should love you terribly — for you were different, a lonely hunter, like me — and now I do.”

She moved to him then, so that their bodies met at every crest of bone, and tangled their fingers together, holding fast. “Thief-lord and witch-queen — what a pair we could make, my love.”

(Oh, her teeth were sharp on his mouth when she kissed him, and his broken lip spilled blood over the both of them, like hot iron cast in the shape of their tongues.)

Robin led the queen’s hand to his chest, to cover the lay of his heart, so that the imprint of the key on her palm fit perfectly against his self-same wound. “As like calls to like,” he said, speaking his desire, “we are already as one, my own heart.”

The queen caught her breath, her nails digging small moons into the flesh around his heart. “Will you stay,” she asked, so hopefully that he could not understand how any man could have denied her, could have parted from the dearness of her voice. “Robin, will you truly stay with me?”

“The castle needs a lord for its lady, and I shall not leave this place so long as you are here,” he swore, and a shiver seemed to pass through them both, through the walls of the great building itself, as they took full possession of each other.

_And the stories would say: the lady in the castle was indeed as dark and beautiful as nightshade, and thrice as deadly; and her lord must drink of her poison, must give of his heart, to rule the night beside her._

_And Robin would concede that these stories were true, that the curse of the place made hauntings of them all, but the lady’s poison tasted not so very bitter when he lay within her keeping. Indeed, when she placed her kisses upon him, she was sweet as berries, their black skins breaking in his mouth and sending the juice running down, down to the perfect join of their bodies._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading to the end! Hope you enjoyed being thoroughly creeped out by this fic - I had a blast writing it and trying not to give away its secrets too early. 
> 
> I don't use twitter, but you can find me (and more fics) at @loveexpelrevolt on tumblr.


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